


Prometheus

by Heavy_Weapons_spy



Category: BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Resurrection, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27611489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heavy_Weapons_spy/pseuds/Heavy_Weapons_spy
Summary: An alternate end for Andrew Ryan in which he gets a far worse fate than he bargained for.
Kudos: 8





	Prometheus

A flash of white and a burst of green lightning brought Andrew Ryan back to life. He hadn't wanted this and he didn't believe in destiny, yet the thought of ending his life again repulsed the magnate. He reached forwards and slid the cold glass doors of the vita chamber open. The ripe stench of his decaying city filled his lungs as he stepped out. He just stood there and went deep into thought, replaying what had just happened, what he had done. He regretted his actions, the intruder had been just a slave and Andrew Ryan was the man who had just tried to kill him.

  
He thinks back to Jasmine Jolene, who he had strangled after he found out that she had sold their child, to Fontaine of all people. Now he considers himself rash, she hadn't done anything actually wrong, he didn't consider a zygote to be a person but it was theirs, he would have happily paid her double whatever the bastard Frank did. What of Diane, he should have ended their relationship rather than drag it out, or why had he clung to the notion of monogamy, he was forging his own world, he could do what he wanted.

  
He looks up to a statue of a man holding up a wrench, a modern Hephaestus. Andrew had always loved the gods of ancient Rome and Greece, not that he beloved in them, yet he never understood why. When Steinman went mad with delusions of Aphrodite, Andrew had kept watching with interest rather than have him silenced like those who smuggle in bibles or communist nonsense. He assumed it was the aesthetic that drew him in, the idolisation of a character, now he considers if he wanted himself to be remembered in the way that gods and kings were. Stories of Andrew Ryan, it felt silly yet oddly possible, perhaps the semi secret Saturnine cult would do it one day.

  
He turned his hands over and looked at his wrinkles and ropey veins, he was ageing, ageing against all his hopes and dreams. He only met his son briefly and he no longer found any solace in the boys existence, he was not living the American dream nor being hidden in Europe, he was a slave.   
Andrew checked his watch, the bomb hadn't gone off, he knew it wouldn't. Just as the boy had restored the air, he had disarmed the bomb and now Andrew had no more cards to play.

  
He could bide his time, regain his power then Ryan industries would take a new direction, but he just didn't have the will to do it any more.  
The scrape of a lead pipe along the metal floor distracted him from his existential crisis. He briefly locks eyes with the former maintenance worker before the thug charges him down. The splicer makes much shorter work of him then Jack did.

  
When he returns to the world for a third time he simply slumps down inside the chamber and thinks to himself for an hour. He does not cry, but his eyes water and he just stares down, not really looking at anything. He can think of nothing that he can do now, he had never imagined that he would hit rock bottom. His suit contained only a few dollars, he had no weapons not even the cane that he had taken to use for walking.

  
His prerecorded voice comes over the public address system and announces that Rapture is on the rise, all lies. He stands up inside the vita chamber and adjusts his suit, he has to be presentable or the public will eat him alive. He opens the door and steps out to give life a second, well third, try.  
He disables the chamber, pauses for a moment to reconsider, then leaves it disabled. He walks to the door and gets a bullet to the brain the moment it opens. At least that was faster.

  
Yet that was still not the end for dear old Andrew. The pain faded away with the tingle of electricity and he was resurrected again, in a very similar chamber.  
It had made sense to him, no gods or kings only man, and so man should want to conquer nature and live forever. For millennia they had settled for passing their wealth to their progeny, serving the common good or furthering some art or science, but no longer! In the fourteen years of Raptures existence he had done it, beaten death, and now he had to live with it.

  
When the door opens he sees that he is no longer in Hephaestus but instead he was looking out onto a street in the farmers market. He strolls out, alone save for a slowly turning security camera which briefly pauses then shines a bright spotlight on him. He walks over to the security shut off station and quickly pays his former machines to stop the alarm. 

  
He comes across a cheese shop, the owners are dead and he doubted they had family. He convinces himself that he isn't thieving or looting but simply claiming unowned property as the first to find it.

  
Smiling to himself he heads to find more delicacies of the sub nautical paradise, only to trip on a electrified wire and land face first in a puddle. He exited the vita chamber just in time to see a man come sprinting in to see what he had caught.

  
"Good day to you." Ryan announced himself. 

  
Perhaps he thought the man would return a greeting or at least give a warning before shooting. Unbeknownst to Andrew he was not the first to fall prey to an electrified trap arrow. The cannibal was a decade younger than Andrew but a lack of grooming and a few splatters of blood made him look far older. Andrew remembered when he thought the little sisters were poorly kept and dirty, now they are some of the best dressed denizens of this place.   
The next arrow hit him square to the chest.

  
Ryan grunted in agony and felt his blood spread out into his shirt. He reached up to clutch his wound but everything started to blur and fade.  
He was back again, in the vita chamber. He checked himself, unwounded and properly dressed. Outside the man was staring at the ground in confusion. Andrew watched as the camera swing back around then sounded an alarm on the splicer. Soon after two security bots descended and riddled him with bullets before simply whistling and going back to their hidey holes. He stepped out of the chamber and disabled it as he had the previous one. It was going to be a long and bumpy road to get all of the wonderous chambers to be powered down.

  
He was uninterrupted as he made his way to the next chamber. He leaned against the window with one arm as he walked, struggling to carry on. He managed to get up into Langford Labs, where a big daddy and his little sister were recovering the ADAM from his splicer lackeys. He waited impatiently for the little sister to move away from the vita chamber so that he could disable it.

  
Ryan had never spliced. He saw the potential but he also saw the risks and had decided to wait until it was safer. He wondered where he could get his hands on some plasmids now. He was cut short again. A group of the Saturnine materialised in a large cloud of red smoke and began a deadly assault upon the gatherers.  
As he cowered down in the corner behind a desk he realised he was wrong, he didn't want to die. He would bide his time and regain control of the city from Atlas. He was sure the damned friend of the people would scupper himself with his altruism.

Fireballs and red hot rivets were exchanged, landmines were thrown and the already destroyed room was devastated all over again. Maybe the Rosie consciously shot the man responsible for his current state, but it was probably just collateral damage.

  
Where was he now he wondered. He could see the ocean and several fish that had come for the light of the chamber. He realised it was a now flooded Neptune's bounty, not that he had ventured that far into the city for a good while now. As the doors opened the chamber flooded with brine and Ryan swam desperately to try and get away, to find any small pocket of air.

  
There were none. He was trapped. Trapped within his immortality.

  
The controls to power down the chamber had been crushed by a fishing sub when the room flooded, there was nothing he could do.  
Perhaps he could pray to the Thinker, maybe it would see that the submerged chamber was reviving him over and over. Perhaps he could make it to a pocket of air somewhere then find a way back inside. Perhaps a big daddy would come and get to work, patching every leak until the room was filled with air again.

  
But alas, poor Andrew Ryan would have to wait, and live with his immortality.


End file.
